AuthorTopic: Remastered CDs sales figures (Read 7017 times)

I saw a story at the Examiner website which gave the sales figures for the remastered CDs from their release on 9th September through to 6th December - a period of just under three months.The figures come from SoundScan, so I assume they are just for the US (the original article doesn't say).

I was surprised to see that Abbey Road outsold Revolver almost two-to-one. I thought Revolver would have been one of the biggest sellers.And A Hard Days Night only makes it to number 10 on the list.The White Album is obviously a popular one - it made it to number 3 in the chart even though it is priced higher than the single CDs.And ignoring YS - which is really only half a Beatles album - the most unpopular of the bunch is BFS.The Beatles first four LPs are at the bottom of the list (again ignoring YS). The early period is obviously not that popular with record buyers.I was also surprised at how high up the list Let It Be is (especially given that Let It Be ... Naked was not released all that long ago).And the pre-release rumours which suggested that the mono box was limited to 10,000 units were obviously wrong, since it sold almost four times that number!!

What are your thoughts on the figures? Are there any that have surprised you?

Mainly because – provided one had the opportunity to listen before buying, the remastering effect is more easily audible on Abbey Road and the White albums. Probably because – for most of the albums before 1968; the source tapes technology did not allow that much flexibility for remastering purposes (these were basically two track, until the mid-60’s; then four track; and ultimately eight track, beginning with White Album and all over Abbey Road).

Beatles For Sale? Again, I am not surprised. Notwithstanding the fact that it is far from being one of my favourites, this specific album does not contain any big hit(s) whatsoever – perhaps only Eight Days a Week,.

About Yellow Submarine… as you already put it, half of it is not Beatles’ stuff. Plus the fact that it was quite recently remixed (a bit) and marketed as Yellow Submarine Songtrack in 1999. I guess that The Beatles fan archetype was generally much less eager to spend hard earned bucks – in financially difficult times, to have in hand quite another version of that (half) album of sorts.

The big surprise to me is the relative low sale figures of the Mono mixes. Soundwise, I do somewhat think that these should have deserved more interest than these sale figures show.

What would be of interest? To compare these new figures against the former 33 RPM sales for each album issue (obviously excluding the Past Masters consolidation) – before CD’s were made available somewhere in the mid-1980’s.

nimrod

I just found out that my stereo box set (bought new on ebay) is actually fake , so how many fake sets have been sold to people like me who thought they were buying the real thing ? maybe you could double those figures !